If you're not a fan of the social elements in Google Reader—like seeing the people following you and the content they're sharing—this simple hack will strip the social features out.

Over at the Fors, a blogging tips and tricks blog, they offer a simple way to remove the social-networking clutter from your Google Reader interface:

Apparently, the Reader team has developed a faster way to turn off shared items and I found it on Twitter, when somebody asked them this question. While you are on the Google Reader page, simply type the following JavaScript command in the address bar of your browser and hit ‘Enter':

javascript:antisocial('true')

After the page reloads, the ‘People you follow' section from the sidebar will be completely hidden. Furthermore, keyboard shortcuts linking to these items and comments will no longer work. It's a pretty complete solution!

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Quite an effect for such a small amount of effort. Unfortunately it isn't a system wide change, if you log in from another browser or computer you'll have to input the javascript snippet again. Until Google allows you to turn off the social elements in the settings—which will likely never happen—it gets the job done.